This is the class blog for Eng 1102 at GA Tech called "Fiction, Human Rights, and Social Responsibility." The purpose of this blog is to extend our discussion beyond the classroom and to become aware of human rights issues that exist in the world today and how technology has played a role in either solving or aggravating them. Blogs will be a paragraph long (250 words) and students will contribute once every three weeks according to class number. Entries must be posted by Friday midnight.

Friday, February 8, 2013

38 years of Violation of Human Rights

I am from a small island in the Mediterranean Sea, in the southeastern
corner of Europe, Cyprus. Cyprus is a beautiful island famous as a tourist attraction
for its sun, beaches and nightlife. However, since the 20th of July
1974, our civil and human rights have been oppressed by the Turkish military. The
Turkish government, given the fake excuse of internal disputes among the
minority of Muslim/“Turkish” population and the majority of Christian/Greek
population of the island, intervened and brutally forced the people from the
north to abandon their houses (my mom’s family too) and part the island in two –
37% of the island is still occupied. On their way they killed, captured and raped
people, destroyed, burned and despoiled properties, churches and historical
monuments.

Some of the few human rights that are violated in Cyprus are
the right of free movement in our own country, the right of living in our own
country, missing/captured people, displacement in our own country, and the
right of doing business and commerce in our own country. In this blog post I will
concentrate on the theme of missing/captured people.

During the illegal invasion, many of our soldiers and
citizens were captured by the barbarous Turkish military. The advance of the
superior Turkish army was so fast that many people didn’t make it to the south
and the UN protected areas. Those captured people were lost and none knows
until today where they are. The numbers are shocking 1619 missing people
(excluding known deaths) out of 600,000 total population. Their ages vary from
infants to elderly. Lately, some discoveries have been made in various parts of
the island with the excavation of massive graves of missing people. However those
found are only a few and much is still to be done. The relatives of the missing
people and the Cyprus Republic have reached the European Court of Justice, the
UN, and every international government and non-governmental organization to persuade
Turkey to reveal the truth and the fate of the missing people. However, Turkey,
as it has always being doing in its history, is cruel enough not to give out
any information. The irony is that Turkey wants to become a member of the EU -
a stronghold of justice and human rights.